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In today’s world, investing time and money in a blog is a very lucrative option for a small business to scale-up. It can help you increase your sales and your profits by leveraging several other opportunities online. You’re probably wondering why someone who owns an auto retail shop should start a blog for their business. Why should someone running a carpet cleaning business put aside precious time to sit at their laptop and key in ‘5 Ways Baking Soda Can Save Your Carpets’? Well, presently, the customer pool for a small business is not limited to people who walk into its brick and mortar storefront. If leveraged right, online opportunities can widen the scope for gaining new customers and increasing sales, and one of the highly effective methods of getting this done is writing and promoting a blog.

But that’s probably not enough to convince you to invest time and money in blogging for your small business, right? Well, here are seven reasons that probably will:

1. Building Authority

This one is a no-brainer. As a business owner, you can use your blog to show your consumers that you are an expert on anything and everything related to your niche. You can break down complicated industry trends in layman terms; you can teach people how to fix their problems based on your expertise on the issue. Doing this will not only help you build a readership but will also earn you the trust of your readers as a dependable source of information.

2. Builds an Online Presence

Having an online presence is essential for a business today. An infographic by Think With Google shows that at least four out of five consumers look for local information before they make a purchase decision. So, how does having a blog help your online presence? You probably have a subscription to a local citation building service to take care of this for you already.

Well, take the gargantuan search engine - Google. When people make search queries, it considers sites with quality content that is original, has brief and accurate titles and descriptions and is search engine optimized. Now maintaining a blog will help you leverage all of these, and will subsequently allow you to rank higher on SERPs. Thus, you will have a larger online presence and reach a larger audience.

3. SEO Opportunities

Blogs give you a treasure trove of SEO opportunities. By maintaining a blog, you can optimize your content to rank higher in search engine results. Basically, you do keyword research to find the most suitable keyword you can rank for, taking the search volume into consideration as well), and strategically place it in your content piece. By doing this, you increase the chances of ranking higher in search results by telling search engines that your content is specific to the search query. Now, having a blog with several articles that are search engine optimized will only mean you have a chance to rank for several keywords that can help you find more customers.

4. An Extension to Your Customer Service

Your blog will be an extension of your customer service. Well, if you think about it, that’s exactly the kind of content your customers will want to read. Articles that are titled along the lines of ‘How to Fix Something That’s Broken by Yourself,' or ‘I Broke Something and This is How I Fixed It!’ is something everyone wants to read. If your blog content is as such, your customers will be better informed and empowered to help themselves. This is another factor that contributes to building a relationship with your potential customers based on trust.

5. Creates Dialogue

If you scroll down to the end of any blog article, you’ll find a comments section where people are discussing the article’s content. That’s what this is about! “What’s something like that going to do for me?”, you ask? Writing a blog and maintaining it can help you start conversations with not only your potential customers but with your peers in the industry as well. You can gain momentum in building a brand persona that is well informed and knowledgeable about industry related matters.

By creating engaging content on your blog, people will leave comments that express approval or disagreement, and this dialogue is an indicator that your content is of good quality. Furthermore, sharing your content on platforms like Reddit can create quite a conversation.

[Pro-Tip: Make sure that you have a good content promotion strategy. You can read more about it here.]

6. Generate Revenue Through Traffic and Leads

Having a blog will give you the leverage for building on your base of potential customers. The best part of marketing your business through content is that you’re educating the customer about a certain topic while giving them the option to understand your services before they make a purchase decision. So, within the anatomy of your blog, you can add CTAs (Call-to-Actions) to bring in leads or potential customers who’ve shown an interest in your content.

7. Personal Growth

As a business owner, you’ve probably got too many tasks to juggle at once. But spending time on your blog can undeniably help up your learning curve. You’ll find that you will gain more knowledge about your industry, and even find your creative side to grow your business. The best part is you are constantly building on this knowledge and imparting it to people who are in need of it. In addition to this, every industry is subject to some cut-throat competition. Maintaining a blog is a vital addition to your marketing toolkit that can help you tackle this speed bump.

So, to sum it up, blogging is an effective means to upscale your business. Now, you’re probably wondering where to start so you can get yourself started. Well, here’s what you need to know before you get started: